1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a magnetoresistive head mounted on a rotating drum and adapted to read a magnetic tape as recording medium by a helical scanning method, and to a magnetic recording/reproducing apparatus using the magnetoresistive head.
2. Description of Related Art
The well-known magnetic recording/reproducing apparatuses using a magnetic tape as recording medium include a video tape recorder, audio tape recorder, computer-oriented data storage system, etc. It has been required for the magnetic recording/reproducing apparatuses to have a larger storage capacity by increasing the higher recording density.
To meet such a demand for both the higher recording density and larger storage capacity, it has been proposed for the magnetic recording/reproducing apparatus to use a magnetoresistive or magnetic-reluctance head (will be referred to as "MR head" hereinunder), and has been under development for practical use.
The MR head uses a magnetic-reluctance or magnetoresistive element (will be referred to as "MR element" hereinunder) as magnetic sensor. It is higher in sensitivity than the magnetic heads of inductive type, and provides a high reproduction output. Therefore, use of the MR head as reading magnetic head is expectable to implement a higher recording density and larger storage capacity.
A fixed head system adapted to read and write a hard disc as a recording medium is typically known as a magnetic recording/reproducing apparatus using an MR head. In the fixed head system, an MR element as magnetic sensor is disposed at an angle of 9020 to the head moving direction, and a guard band having no magnetic transition zone is provided at either end of the recording track not to detect a magnetic flux from the neighboring tracks.
The guard band is considerably disadvantageous to attain a higher recording density and larger storage capacity of the MR head.